In modern times it has become ever more rare that discoveries of new properties or new characteristics of existing substances are still being made. Even just 'mere' innovative combinations or configurations of existing substances are increasingly rare. Of course, new chemical molecules are made everyday by industrial chemists and there is a lot of capacity for discovery in the fields of gene technology and nano materials – but it is almost impossible to envisage that anything can be left as yet unknown when it comes to things that have already been around a long time. For the most part, we think we know all that there is to know about them.
Fantasy uses for certain objects and substances are attractive for creative people to think about and to try to design functions and features around, but without real processes going on that are new and different, such design inputs always remain in the realm of the superficial and the functionally virtually pointless.
Deep fantasy has a kernel of reality inside it that energizes and tantalizes the human mind. One of the most enduring of sci-fi or futuristic visions is the incomparable Syd Mead's Cocktail Party 2050. Although it involves extremely avant garde science, there exists today every single element of technology that could recreate such a scene on a completely functional, and not a merely superficial visual basis.
It appears that the figures in the scene are imbibing something gaseous from out of the goblets, rather than drinking a liquid therefrom. This element of the picture is somewhat a mystery to the standard scientific knowledge base of most modern observers. However the futuristic helmets that presumably contain specialised electrodes for bio- and neural feedback are nowadays really available, as fully-developed commercial products that go hand-in-hand with commercial market compatible software in the form of iPod apps.
But what is in the goblets and what is their actual function?
- Scientific 'holy grail' fantasy - the actual fragrance of a gemstone...
A holy grail fantasy of artisanal perfumiers, is the scientifically impossible concept of being able to derive a fragrance from a precious jewel, or gemstone, or crystal. This is of course impossible because a crystaline substance like a sapphire or diamond is a solid state, inorganic thing that gives off no odor molecules. Impurities within, such as sulphur, or other resinous substances that look like a mineral – such as amber – can be burned or heated to give off odor molecules, but this is not what is being sought.
Thus it is of absolutely stupendous significance that today's leading-edge technicians of odor and the human neurological processes involved in their perception and interpretation by the mind – such as Luca Turin and Thomas Prevenslik – are opening frighteningly challenging new doorways to understandings about what is really going on with this sense channel, from the material physics and chemistry outside, to the brain science and neurology inside. And these advances place the particular 'holy grail' referred to above, within real grasp.
As far as the human figures themselves, that adorn this scene – what are we to make of them? These figures do not speak to a cult of the body... This is not even just a cult of the super body. This is about a super cult of the super body!
The first mistake that is made by those vast numbers of self-righteous cynics and theoretical psychologists who are entirely dismissive of this vision, is that of almost a deliberate confusing of the bizarre and the starkly extreme, with genuine aesthetic ideals. But much more indictable of dishonesty, is the offence of appearing to fail to realise that not only does the body normally reflect signs of inner wellness, and intellectual wellness, but some of the functional benefit of a genuine 'cult of the body' involves pre-empting those diseases and illnesses of the body and mind which may be traced to the very opposite contemporary cult which certainly exists today – that of the deliberate and militant enfeeblement of the mind and body. A genuine cult of the body is both medically beneficial to the individual, as well as economically efficient to the whole of society.
It is purely cynical to say that a zeitgeist revolving around the cult of the body as a superb and attractive biological machine, also claims the body as capital. For one thing, in a world in which banks and government have no interest to preserve material capital, and squander and thieve monetized human effort at every opportunity – it is no bad thing that a private individual can turn himself or herself under their own personal leadership of themselves into social capital, or turn a dimension of themselves into tradeable financial capital, merely on account of the way they look in terms of physical well-being, health, and/or fitness.
And once again, the body as capital, does not detract from the mind or the intellect as capital; all these things not being mutally exclusive.
If you would like to see and know more about the technologies involved in realising
the vision, please consult this commercial website – and which is also a gateway to
real private parties of no less a
super cult nature -
http://mind-decadence.webs.com/
